


take a chance til my heart is broken.

by marquis



Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:48:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one in which Liam falls for everyone, but no one falls for Liam until the very, very end.</p><p>Title taken from Aiden Grimshaw's "Chokehold":<br/><i>It's just a matter of time</i><br/><i>Until I know wrong from right</i><br/><i>Gonna fight</i><br/><i>For a while until it finds me.</i><br/><i>Can't help but dwell on the past</i><br/><i>Don't make a song and a dance</i><br/><i>Take a chance</i><br/><i>Until your heart is broken.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	take a chance til my heart is broken.

It’s not exactly a secret that Liam falls for the broken ones. It’s not a secret that he likes to piece them back together, to help them back onto their feet just so they can walk out of his front door and out of his life. It’s not a secret, but he doesn’t go around telling anyone. He doesn’t even really look for the broken ones, either; it’s just that sometimes he’ll look up and there will be those eyes, and he’ll be a goner until he gets them under his wing.

\--

Louis’ eyes had been blue. He remembers them, the swirling pool that changed colors when the light hit them funny. He remembers trying to define the looks he send Liam’s way during school, when they sat by each other outside of the dorm building on a bright spring day, remembers watching as Louis chased down girls with too-long legs and boys with curly hair and wide, lazy grins. He remembers waiting for it to be his turn, remembers the feeling of _truly_ falling for the first time. Tripping and stumbling over his words, blushing when Louis laughed, missing him when he was gone and missing him when he sat too far away on the couch.

It was the curly one that did him in, Liam knows. It was Harry who broke up with Louis when he moved to the States to “make a name for himself” or something, Harry who ruined Louis and left him crying softly on the sofa in their dorm room late one November night. (Louis didn’t sob. He didn’t gasp for breath and scream and let it all out. He was too _strong_ for that, had set up too many walls. Even so, those walls didn’t keep him from crying.)

He’d taken his tea scalding hot that night, accepting the mug with bare hands too close to the rim. He’d sipped at the steaming water immediately, not caring when it burned his tongue or stung his lips or made him wince. Louis had kept going, defensive in his own sort of silent way, until the stars came out and it got quiet. And then he had looked over at Liam with those blue, blue eyes –

And Liam thought to himself, _fuck_.

There was that look that Liam had seen so many times, so lovely and confusing and terribly Louis that it sent his heart reeling. Only there was something else, too; there was pain. There was heartbreak and loneliness and longing, and Liam had taken the empty mug from Louis’ hands and set it on the table before moving to set it on the coffee table. They’d watched each other for a minute, breath catching on the space between _just_ and _something_ , and then Liam had leaned in and covered Louis’ lips with his own and it all fell to pieces from there.

His hands were small and his waist was thin, all curves and sharp cheekbones and contradictions. He was loud and boisterous and full of adventure Liam never felt, full of endless energy and hope even as he came home to collapse in Liam’s arms and cry some more over someone he’d lost. He was coping, and Liam prided himself on making that happen, and it all seemed lovely for a little while.

They went out, Louis with his sad eyes and Liam with his unwavering loyalty, but he never broke down those impregnable walls nor got every little piece of Louis. He told himself he hadn’t wanted it anyway, when he came home to find Harry back from the other side of the pond with a new tattoo and a love bite to match, Louis groaning underneath him.

\--

Danielle had brown eyes, deep dark brown that looked so very different from bright, painful blue. Liam hadn’t wanted to fall for her, at first, too caught up in his own world and his own thoughts. She had snuck up on him, a little slip of dark skin that felt soft beneath his fingers and smelled like cinnamon. It was impossible, he’d thought, to ever have any part of her at all; she had a boyfriend, a wonderful lad with blonde hair and an Irish accent, and he’d walk her into the office with an arm around her waist and lips lost in her curly, curly hair.

They came to talking, both stuck sitting behind the front desk with fake smiles and calls on hold. She would twirl her hair around her finger and laugh at all of his jokes, and Liam would try to convince himself that it didn’t mean anything at all. It worked out well enough, her leaving with someone she loved every night and waving to Liam over her shoulder as he sat alone and waited for the chance to close everything up and go home.

And then one day her boyfriend didn’t come to get her.

One day, she was silent and stubborn by her computer screen, head down and face hidden behind a wall of hair. Her voice was quiet and calm with the customers, composed in a way that she’d never really been before. She sounded like Liam, all robotic with no charm and no personality over the phone to win people over. Danielle wasn’t herself, but Liam didn’t want to ask why. He didn’t want to admit to the churning and flipping in his chest, the silent ache that never went away, only got larger when she smiled at him.

Danielle didn’t leave him to walk home alone that night. She waited for him outside the door, wraith-like and almost pale in the dim light lining the street, and when he walked outside she linked an arm through his and looked at him with those beautiful brown eyes. Her hands were longer and thinner than Louis’ had been, there weren’t curves or sharp angles to mull over, and she gripped him harder than Louis ever had, a tight hold that kept him frozen. But when she lifted her eyes from the concrete to look at him, the same sadness was hidden behind her eyes. She looked at him for a minute or two, neither one saying a word, and while Liam had no idea what had happened, didn’t know how long it would last, he felt like he’d won something.

She went home with him that night and was gone when the morning came. Niall – her boyfriend – punched him in the jaw later that day for his trouble.

\--

Zayn was the hardest, Liam knew.

It was difficult to admit that. There was no point in comparing all of them, Louis with his too-bright smile and Dani with her too-tiny waist and Zayn with his too-big lips, wrapped around a cigarette in the winter cold. There had been enough hurt from the three of them combined; did it matter which one was more at fault? Did it matter which one had gotten the deepest, only to come back up and turn away?

In reality, it probably didn’t. To Liam, maybe it did. Only a little bit, though, or at least that was what he told himself late at night, curled around his pillow and wishing for fingers to curl around his wrist and pull him away from sleep. That was what he told himself, when he got too lonely and wished for someone he’d had for a month or a night or never really at all.

Because he never really _did_ have Zayn.

Zayn was broken from the very beginning. That was what was so attractive about him, really; there had never been a chance for Liam to fall in love with that other side of him, the one that was confident and held his head up high enough for everyone to see. His eyes were the color of honey, sweet enough to make Liam’s throat close up, and they held a sort of profound pain so artfully blended with the one that Liam knew. Liam wanted to _fix_ him. It was only a matter of time before he fell in love, as well.

That was what a small part of him knew – the part he’d recently decided to ignore, the part that believed in happy endings and good things. It was what a part of him had whispered from the moment they’d made eye contact, across the library. Zayn had been a student at the time, studying for a degree in something that wasn’t art, something that would _get_ him somewhere. Liam had moved on from his boring job as a secretary to the much more enticing position of a bartender, the only option he had after quitting so quickly with a rent so demanding.

As it turned out, Zayn was looking for a flatmate, too, but Liam had been down that road before. He’d lived with someone with sad eyes, and it had ended with him lonely on a sofa that was once so warm. It had ended up with him here, standing in the library and watching but not caring. (Liam was more guarded now, less naïve. He may have fucked up, but no one could say he hadn’t learned from his mistakes. He wouldn’t _let_ them.)

So he didn’t mention, when Zayn said he was planning on finding a place off-campus, that he had a room big enough for a second bed, if they took everything else out. He didn’t say that Zayn could stay on his couch until they found somewhere else to stay. He sat across from Zayn in the library and listened to him talk for hours every Thursday, under the pretense of needing new books _all the time_. Liam was lying, there, but he told himself he wasn’t. He told himself that one of these days he was going to find a book that caught his interest and he was going to check it out and that would be it. He would stop going in. Zayn wouldn’t be a part of his life.

In the end, it had been Zayn who suggested they lived together. Liam had mentioned being a bit late on his rent, and Zayn had said he could help to cover the loose ends, so long as Liam let him cover the couch, too. Liam told Zayn no, he couldn’t do that to him, but Zayn had insisted – “What are friends for?” – and it was the first time Liam had had a _friend_ in so long that he had agreed after only a moment’s hesitation, nodding and smiling and inviting Zayn home.

He’d been _so_ careful.

He’d tried so _hard_.

So it was inevitable, really, walking in one day to find Zayn sitting at the kitchen table with a mug in his hands and a smile on his face, laughter floating out from between his lips in a way that Liam had never heard it before now. There was a girl across the table, a pretty little thing with faded lavender hair and bright blue eyes that caught the light, and – well, Liam could understand why Zayn wanted her. She was lovely.

Zayn had introduced Perrie like he was announcing some sort of magnificent prize, and Liam supposed that perhaps she was, to him. He’d nodded and made the excuse that he needed to take a quick nap before work, late nights and all that, and they had both gone back to their conversation as if he’d never been there. It was up to Liam to go to his room, lie down, and wrap his arms around a pillow. It was up to Liam to take his own heart and stitch it back together, like he had so many times.

It was okay. It was alright. He knew how to do it well enough by now.

\--

“Hey, Liam.”

He didn’t feel the need to frown when he saw her anymore. She was as much a part of his life as Zayn was, always around the flat cleaning this or redecorating that or hanging one of her photos on the wall. She and Zayn shared the pull-out couch, and her clothes filled the drawers that used to be solely Zayn’s. It had been months since Liam had felt his stomach drop when he found them curled up together, but. It had also been a lot longer since he had someone else.

Recently, that had been a lot harder to ignore. With Zayn and Perrie so wrapped up in each other all the time, it was awful difficult not to feel lonely.

“Hey, Perrie.”

They weren’t unfriendly, by any means, but some part of Liam knew that _she_ knew. She knew that Liam had wanted Liam before, that there was something unresolved then. It was worse that she didn’t hate him for it; there was nothing to go on, no reason for him to want to leave the room in the first few weeks of the couple being together. So they remained polite and cordial with one another, and even though they might have been friends under different circumstances, Liam didn’t feel as though they’d ever be particularly close now.

“Uh,” she started, smiling in that tiny little way she did when she was up to something, “would you mind doing me a favor?”

Liam sat up a little straighter, tilting his head. “Of course. What did you need?”

Her smile got a little bit wider. “Oh, great! Uh,” she stalled again, looking to the door as if someone was going to catch her in the middle of doing something she shouldn’t. “There’s a friend of mine – my old flatmate, actually, from before I moved in here – and she’s. Well, she’s in pretty bad shape right now, all lonely and stuff, and I really hadn’t wanted to move in here because she’d be all by herself.”

Perrie looked at him like he was supposed to understand some sort of hidden message there. When he didn’t, she sighed and rolled her eyes.

“She’s out of a pretty bad relationship and she feels really lonely, and I don’t want her to do anything stupid, so I was wondering,” and yes, okay, _now_ Liam saw where it was going, “if you could maybe take her out tonight? Keep her mind off of things for a while? I would, except…”

Liam nodded. It made sense, really; he’d done a shit job at hiding how off he’d felt recently, and Perrie obviously wanted some alone time with Zayn, and this was just a convenient excuse. It was a way to get Liam out of the house without hurting his feelings. He nodded again and cleared his throat, wishing she’d stop biting her lip and staring like he was something _fragile_. “Yeah, ‘course. What’s the address?”

She beamed at him. “Great!”

\--

Liam had thought it might have been a setup of some sort. He hadn’t actually believed that Perrie was worried for her friend – although there had to have been some truth in the story, if she felt like she could get away with telling it. He thought maybe he knew someone lonely and desperate, just as sad as Liam was, maybe, and this was all going to end in horror and tragedy and Perrie would never be able to talk to him again.

Instead, what he got when he knocked on the door is a quiet little _just a minute_ from inside before the door opens a crack, just a little bit. A brown eye peeked at him from inside, darker than Zayn’s and darker than Danielle’s and even more vulnerable than Louis’ had ever been. It moved up and down, looking him over, before the door opens a little further and a face appears, tanned and ghostly pale all at once.

There was a halo of messy, dark hair tinged with pink or purple or something along those lines – definitely Perrie’s friend, then – and she looked just as scattered as the wayward strands. “Yes?” she asked, and there was a Scottish lilt to it and she just looked so _broken_ -

Liam stopped himself right there. He’d done this before, several times, fallen for someone with unguarded eyes and a wavering voice. They’d turned around and spat it back in his face somehow, every single one of them, and he’d be damned if he was going to let them do it again. He was doing Perrie a favor. This didn’t have to go anywhere, didn’t have to lead to anything at all. He could hang out for one night and one night only, go home to his own bed, and forget about the girl with the colorful hair and the dark, wide eyes. He _could_.

“Uhm – hi. I’m Liam? I’m a friend of Perrie’s.” That was all he would have to say, he hoped. Perrie said that the girl would understand and he wouldn’t need to say that he’d been sent over. A part of him was whispering that she’d lied, that he was going to have to explain and it wasn’t going to work.

The girl’s mouth dropped open into a perfect little ‘o’. “I thought – is it half eight already? Really?” She turned to look behind her, presumably at a clock. Liam heard her let out a little yelp. “Oh, god, I’m – shit – oh god, I’m sorry, I don’t normally swear, it’s just – um.” The door slammed shut, effectively stopping the flow of words and halted speech. Liam had to fight to keep a smile off his face, scolding himself.

The first time had blown up in his face. The second time hadn’t even been good enough to last. The third time hadn’t even ever really happened. He was kidding himself to believe in another chance, a fourth time that would magically work out in his favor. It wouldn’t work out that way.

“One minute, please,” Liam heard the stranger call out to him through the door. He didn’t want to be rude, not now that he’d already been seen, so he waited.

It took longer than a minute. They both knew it would, anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal when the door finally opened and the girl stepped out from behind, dyed hair falling in loose waves and jean shorts held up by colorful braces. (He’d never quite understood how it was that a girl could go from looking like she’d just rolled out of bed to something spectacular; he’d watched the transformation in both of his sisters several times, but it had never worked itself out in his head.)

He was expecting her to look at him with the same open vulnerability that she’d had when she first opened the door, and at first, she did. Her eyes were wide and scared and everything Liam always fell for. Instead of his usual reaction, though, the skipping heart and the flopping stomach, he felt something twisting in his stomach, a little warning sign.

But then she looked down at the ground and took a deep, shaky breath. When she met his eyes again, there was a sort of determination in there, fiery and defiant. She held out a hand. “Hello, stranger. My name’s Jade.”

Liam took hold of her hand and shook it lightly. He could see what Perrie had told him now; confidence was like a pair of shoes one size too large on this tiny girl, something she’d only just tried on from her mother’s closet. Jade had never been determined before, or not enough that she was used to the feel of it yet. He could almost imagine the dark bruises shaped like fingerprints on her wrist, the scratches on her cheek and her arms, but he didn’t.

He focused on her eyes, on the strength hidden in there that she was still struggling to find. He focused on nodding and smiling back. “I’m Liam.”

She smiled. “So I’ve heard,” and there was something soft in her voice, something delicate. It was her way of treating him gently, he realized, and so someone, Perrie or Zayn, must have told her. Someone must have told her that Liam hadn’t dated anyone in so long, that he’s lonely and broken like the ones he tried to fix. Like Louis and Dani and someone else they don’t know, ghosts he only mentioned when he got drunk enough to forget come morning.

Liam hadn’t realized how broken he’d been until right then, standing in front of a stranger’s door. He wondered, distantly, how long he’d been wandering around with that heartbroken look in his eyes. He wondered how long he’d been waiting to find someone who would help _him_ , for once.

“I hope you’ve heard nice things, Jade,” he responded solemnly, mock-serious expression on his face. “I’d hate to start out on the wrong foot.”

She laughed just a little bit, small and bright. “Of course. I’ve only heard the very brightest bits and pieces.”

Liam thought that it might have even been the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So the amount of response/feedback I got on I Don't Wanna Know was absolutely spectacular, and I don't know what to even say in thanks, although I can certainly tell you that this fic is totally and unaccountably lame in comparison to that one, and I am very sorry about that. Unfortunately, I don't often write anything over 2,000 words. This one is even a bit long, by my standards. I'm trying to get better about that, but. You know. Such is life.  
> Anywho, let me know what you think, give some feedback, et cetera. Thank you!


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